Paired with Crysis as our second behemoth FPS is Metro: 2033. Metro gives up Crysis’ lush tropics and frozen wastelands for an underground experience, but even underground it can be quite brutal on GPUs, which is why it’s also our new benchmark of choice for looking at power/temperature/noise during a game. If its sequel due this year is anywhere near as GPU intensive then a single GPU may not be enough to run the game with every quality feature turned up.

Metro was another game that the GTX 680 had trouble with, leading to it trailing the 7970 by the slightest bit. With multiple GPUs thrown into the mix that slight gap has significantly widened, leading to the GTX 690 once again trailing the 7970CF, particularly at 2560 and 5760. In this case the GTX 690 is only hitting 82% of the 7970CF’s performance at 5760, and 84% at 2560. It’s only at 1920 (and 100fps) that the GTX 690 can catch up. So much like the GTX 680, NVIDIA’s not necessarily off to a great start here compared to AMD.

Meanwhile GTX 690 performance relative to the GTX 680 SLI once again looks good here, although not quite as great as with Crysis. At 5760 the GTX 690 achieves 96% of the performance, and at 2560 97% of the performance. So far the GTX 690 is more or less living up to NVIDIA’s claims of being two 680s on a single card.

You are right that the average Joe doesn't have a 1920x1200 monitor, but this is an enthusiast web-site! Not a single enthusiast I know owns a 1080 display. 1920x1200 monitors aren't hard to find, but you will need to spend a tad more.Reply

Nope, 242 vs 16 is availability, you lose miserably. You all didn't suddenly have one along with your "friends" you suddenly acquired and have memorized their monitor sizes instantly as well.ROFL - the lies are innumerable at this point.Reply

It's either 1920x1200 @ 60hz, or 1920x1080 @ 120hz. I prefer smoother gameplay over 120 pixels. Also I know quite a few gamers that like using their TV for their PC gaming, so this would also be limited to 1080p.Reply

I'm be more worried about AMD's performance going down in certain games due to Crossfire than something as trival as this. As a 4870X2 owner I can tell you this is not at all uncommon for AMD. I still have to disable 1 GPU in most games, including BF3, because AMDs drivers for any card more than 12 months old are just terrible. As you can see even the 6990 is being beat by a 6970 in games as modern as Skyrim - their drivers are just full of fail. Reply